A SpaceX rocket will slam into the moon on Wednesday, and astronomers will be watching closely
A discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage is on a collision course with the moon, with impact expected in August 2026. Astronomers are tracking the object to determine the exact timing and location of the crash.
Why it matters
The event highlights the increasing amount of space debris and the challenges of tracking human-made objects in deep space.
The body is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that carried two commercial lunar landers: the U.S's Firefly Blue Ghost-1 and Japan's ispace Hakuto-R Resilience. The rocket launched in January 2025.
Bill Gray, an independent astronomer who also writes tracking software, had been following it since launch, and last September he noticed the rocket was going to make a close encounter with the moon on Aug. 5, 2026.
But getting the exact orbital data is tricky. While the gravity of the moon and Earth are well understood when it comes to orbital mechanics, the sun exerts a tiny bit of force on objects in space, so Gray had to take that into account.
Finally, once the orbit was refined, he realized that it wasn't going to be a close encounter — it was going to be a direct hit.
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